…by Gordon Duff, VT Senior Editor

Introduction:  It isn’t that we all got played it is just that everything “we” are fed or allowed to see is a total lie.  Our sources, quite surprisingly, tell us that the Deep State using their “dynamic duo” of Barr and Mueller, CIA operatives for 40 plus years, we are told, to keep Trump in power long enough to allow America and Russia to be brought to their knees. 

Our story began with an operation by Saudi intelligence against former Vice President Joe Biden and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.  We now find it is much wider, like that was a surprise.

Russiagate was cooked up by former (and current) AG, Bob Barr and his oldest and dearest friend of 40 years, former FBI Director, Robert Mueller, a prep school brat and son of very old money who, we are now told, “went to Vietnam” as a CV enhancer for a career as a “useful tool” of the Deep State.”

When I was told Robert Mueller worked on the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, I was skeptical.  The information came with no evidence though Mueller’s history was a strange one, pure “stealth.”

We thank Gene “Chip” Tatum who phoned from Ecuador to warn me that Mueller was working for Barr all along and that both had been CIA assets since the 1970s and Chip would know.

I worked with Phoenix personnel when the CIA and Pentagon tried to send them to Nicaragua to kill off “Sandinista infrastructure, nurses and teachers mostly and later when they were reassigned to train Gladio operatives from Libya at secret camps there, pretending to be “IRA terrorists.”

Chip warned me that Russiagate was an “op” and only that and that Mueller and Barr had cooked this up as they had when they had gone after Noriega, a CIA drug asset who had to be silenced to save the Bush family, or later in using the DOJ and FBI to coverup the 9/11 conspiracy and silence those who would have asked for a congressional inquiry on the fake war in Iraq, such as was done in the UK against Tony Blair, “W’s” partner in that criminal effort.

“Mueller was working as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts when he got the call and according to a Princeton alumni report, was on the next plane.

Mueller and Barr became friends in the early to mid 70’s as both assets of the CIA.” …excerpted from “The Mule,” a new book by Gene “Chip” Tatum

This is coming in from multiple sources.  First we learn that Bob Barr, now Attorney General, pushed for the nomination of Robert Mueller to investigate RussiaGate, a GOP fake story to cover Trump’s KosherNostra ties.

You see, Mueller, the alleged head of the 9/11 coverup and “silencer” of all who would have blocked the illegal war in Iraq, is “besties’ with Bob Barr, former CIA fixer.

“RussiaGate,” from day one was a Barr/CIA/Mossad op against the press, buying Trump two years to give away the US to Israel.

Now Trump is fighting a fake war on the press while the real enforcers are doing their “magic” with Saudi intelligence, the same folks who murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a major Trump critic working at the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, someone who can buy and sell pretty much everyone with his small change.  More from Chip Tatum on spoiled “son of wealth” Robert Mueller:

“The son of wealth, brought up in a family accustomed to power.  The great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale, Robert Swann Mueller III was raised to show and demand respect and he was raised to lead.”

From Princeton to the Marines

Mueller was born to a social rank that barely exists anymore.  He is a closeted WASP elite of the northeastern families who sent their sons to New England prep schools built with generations of inherited wealth.

Mueller’s father was an executive at DuPont, part of a family firmly planted in the country’s plutocracy.  Mueller, who grew up in Princeton, N.J., and the Philadelphia Main Line, was sent to St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, where the Astor, Vanderbilt and Mellon families educated their boys.

At the Episcopal school, Mueller became captain of the soccer, hockey and lacrosse teams.  he played hockey with classmate John F. Kerry, a future secretary of state and one of the three St. Paul’s alumni who would run for president.”

Now we find that what began as a smear campaign against Bezos may well now become a potential hit.  Trump’s primary enemies are turning out to be, of all things Joe Biden and Jeff Bezos.

What the public isn’t seeing is that this pair is behind the split in the Democratic Party that is leading progressives away from blind support of Israel.  The ability to stand behind Israel’s history of brutality and their new “legalized” apartheid state, including the planned ethnic cleansing of the oil rich Golan Heights (violating a 1981 UNSC resolution), is at an end for millions of Americans.

Only days ago, we saw Israel’s man on the “fringe,” Alex Jones confess to being a conspiracy monger and “getting it wrong.”  We love Alex and enjoy the fact that, not only is he a conspiracy monger but he is also a big supporter of apartheid Israel and everything “KosherNostra.”

Seeing him “brought down” in what we believe is a fake lawsuit well serves the Kosher Nostra ADL lobby in silencing legitimate alternative news sites, although I am not sure I can name one of those right now off the top of my head.  SouthFront?  Press TV?  VT?  More…?

The stealth guy here is Biden.  Obama, for 8 years, fought a war against the Israel lobby in Washington, working to limit their seizure of Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories and failing to support their military action against their neighbors.

The Israeli “Iron Dome” air defense system is a fake.  It is supported by American AEGIS ships that Obama and Byden took “off station” to keep Israel from repeating their nuclear attack on Syria made on May 4, 2013 after Syria sunk an Israeli-German (DVD according to Shrimpton) submarine, with cruise missile launcher (Pentagon?).  The video below is retaliation.

Jeff Smith of the IAEA, a nuclear weapons designer/particle physicist, identified this as a nuclear attack.  Most obvious is the “ball lightning” at the end of the explosion, within the mushroom cloud.

Harvard Study on Nuclear Explosion-Induced Lighting

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

With more proof from the Los Alamos National Laboratory demonstrating ball lightning during nuclear explosion and ONLY nuclear explosions.  It was this nuclear attack that forced Obama and Biden to break totally with Israel.

Now we are seeing Saudi intelligence, coordinated by Jared Kushner (the man Robert David Steele calls a Judas to Trump — the Arabs call him the “Clown Prince“), assigned to “take out” Bezos and Biden by any means.  These are the same Saudi’s that planned and executed 9/11 with a little help from their friends, the same friends that now surround Trump.  Read more Here.

The crowing going on, of course, is Barr and Mueller coordinating another coverup, this one of Israel rigging the 2016 election and beginning two years of cheap theatre.

Yes, Barr and Mueller are the coverup kings of all time, best friends and Mueller has been behind Trump 110% since day one.

From VT, May 5, 2013:

…by  Gordon Duff and Press TV

 

[ Editor’s Note: We are going to stop and take a breath more frequently, and look back to older articles to remind new and old readers that a lot of these “current news” stories are continuations of older ones that VT has had its teeth in like a junkyard dog, for some time.

We also want to showcase the pitiful stand down that corporate media has taken on these public uses of nuclear weapons, when no World War is going on — the traditional kind anyway. And that said, if the powers that be have decided they want to engage in an ongoing undeclared world war, solely at their pleasure, why have all our international and civic organizations taken this lying down?

The worst contempt is reserved for the IAEA, who pretends to be policing nuclear proliferation, when it has a long history of only selectively doing so. And last, the public has abandoned itself, with no visible backlash effort whatsoever.

Sure, there has been almost no leadership to carry the flag for such an effort, but anyone even contemplating doing so could easily ask. “Where would the public support be for such an effort?”… Jim W. Dean ]

__________________________

A Trip Down the VT Memory Road

Analysis shows Syria came under attack by Israel using, not just nuclear weapons, but an American nuclear bunker buster bomb, one of several supplied to Israel to use against Iran, one of the last acts of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Related Interviews:

• Syrian govt. must continue to make gains
• ‘Iran, Russia true friends of Syrians’

Striking evidence of the use of American EPW (Earth Penetrating Weapons) nuclear weapons in Syria has come to light. Experts say the proof is irrefutable.

Dramatic video footage from Syria has revealed startling evidence that counters Israel’s claims of “surgical strikes” on weapons headed to Lebanon.

Confirmed Nuclear Strike (note lightning)

Available in High Definition

[youtube vm7ObVSix7w]

What were said to be air strikes is now proven to have actually been artillery, something easily discernible to even an untrained observer.

What happens next is shocking. While artillery shells rain down on Syrian army positions, mobile Israeli artillery in direct support and even accompanying rebel forces inside Syria, a huge explosion occurs.  Original video has been suppressed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd2U0ixucrM#t=102

After analysis, it had become clear, Syria had come under attack by Israel using, not just nuclear weapons, but an American nuclear bunker buster bomb, one of several supplied to Israel to use against Iran, one of the last acts of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Submitted for analysis, the footage was compared with tests of the 37,000-pound MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), designed by Boeing to be used against Iran’s underground facilities.

Caught! Frame Analysis of Syrian Nuclear Event

There was no similarity whatsoever noted between the Syrian “event” and a conventional “bunker buster” including the GBU 57, the largest conventional weapon every to be used.

More Proof

Colonel James Hanke, former Defense Attaché and Liaison between the Pentagon and Netanyahu’s government , reviewed the footage. He indicated that the GBU 57 is considered too high a risk for use because of its danger to the earth’s crust.

“The Syrian/African fault line spreads into Israel. Were it to be subjected to this kind of explosive power, the threat of an earthquake doing significant damage in Israel is a reality.

The nuclear bunker busters have far less penetrating power and, I am not saying that this was a nuclear device, not until more evidence is in, but the ‘event profile’ shows striking similarities.”

The other problem with the GBU 57 is delivery. Only two aircraft are capable of delivering this weapon, the B-52 and B-2 Stealth Bomber.

Israel does not have these aircraft.

Collapse of US Air Force Command Structure,

Again Thus, if a MOP where used, it could have only been delivered by the United States Air Force, an organization reeling from recent disasters within its own ranks after a second lapse in nuclear weapons security in a five-year period was discovered at Minot Air Force Base in South Dakota.

Seventeen officers have been removed, a “house cleaning” of unprecedented scale. Back in 2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered a restructuring of America’s nuclear security command after a 2007 incident at Minot.

A B-52 was loaded with thermonuclear weapons and flown off the base, violating 84 separate authorization protocols. The plane was later recovered over 1500 miles away under circumstances that have never been adequately explained. What is also not clear is whether the entire nuclear payload was recovered, complete and intact.

Nuclear Use in Iraq Proven

The most important consideration is whether any command organization, be it Israeli, American or any other, would be willing to use nuclear weapons. There is little question that their use has been advocated by both political and military leaders.

The prohibition has been the ability to conceal their use. Events in Iraq have proven such concealment to have worked effectively and when conclusive proof of nuclear weapons use was offered to the media and world scientific community, it was quickly “contained.”

On December 31, 2010, Dr. James Fetzer interviewed Dr. Chris Busby, a bio-medical studies professor at the University of Ulster, engaged in research on the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) in relation to birth defects in Iraqi children. What Dr. Busby found was startling:

The interesting thing about the uranium was that we were able to measure the isotopic ratio because we were interested to see whether it was, you know, natural uranium or was it DU, which is what we thought it would be.

But in fact it turned out to be slightly enriched uranium [with U-235], so, that is to say, it was manmade enriched uranium. Now enriched uranium is a material that should only be found in a nuclear power station or inside an atomic bomb.

So to find it in the hair of the parents of these children with congenital malformations was really astonishing.

So we then went to look to see how this could be, and to cut a long story short, we concluded from various patents from the US patent office that we received from physicists, that it was quite entirely likely that there was a new secret weapon being used, an anti-personnel weapon of some sort which contained enriched uranium or else generated enriched uranium. …the alternative – which is sort of science fictional and which is entirely possible –

I have to say, which is that they have developed a sort of neutron device which uses enriched uranium as part of its components to generate neutrons. And the way it does this is to dissolve tritium in uranium powder…

What Dr. Busby is describing is an Enhanced Radiation Weapon (ERW) or Neutron Bomb. Other variations in America’s secret nuclear arsenal included Minimal Residual Radiation (MRR) weapons.

Evidence of use of “special weapons” has been found at the scenes of more than one terror attack, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center (9/11), Bali and several others.

The first hard evidence published by qualified scientists involved Fallujah. However, use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan, is said to be relatively common.

Israel’s Bomb Inventory Scandal

• One of the greatest “non-secrets” of recent years involves the placement of Israel’s weapons inventory. In 1986, Israeli nuclear weapons technician, Modechai Vanunu, was kidnapped from Italy and taken to Israel where he has been held for over 25 years. His crime; reporting on Israeli’s secret nuclear program at Dimona.
• Cables released by Wikileaks revealed that the United States had, in 2006, allowed Libya to build a new chemical weapons facility. What has not been “Wiki-leaked” is that, when the facility was discovered after the fall of the Gaddafi government, it was found to have been run by the Israeli government.Since those initial reports, nothing more has been mentioned. It is very likely that this illegal facility, inside Libya, is still in Israeli hands.
• In June 2010, the USS Grapple, an American naval vessel with an “unspecified” foreign crew, docked at the port of Poti, in Georgia. Ten Israeli torpedo boats, similar to those that attacked the USS Liberty, escorted it.The ship’s cargo was bombs, including runway and area denial weapons along with the enhanced version of the BLU 113 “Super Penetrator,” a conventional bunker buster weapon weighting 4700 pounds.

Azerbaijani Ploy

These munitions were then transferred to weapons bunkers at a former Soviet airfield inside Azerbaijan where Israel had managed to sequester a number of attack aircraft.

These planes had flown on to Azerbaijan after taking part in joint operations between the Turkish and Israeli air forces.

After their presence was discovered, we have been told the Israeli planes returned home but there is no evidence that the munitions had been repatriated to either Israel or to the United States, their place of origin.

Conclusion

We know and can prove that advanced nuclear weapons have been used in the United States. We have evidence of their use elsewhere in recent years.

We also know that methodologies to conceal their use and manage press leaks have been very effective and have created a combat environment where the “nuclear option” is always “on the table.”

We also have film and photographs from Syria showing something we have no other explanation for. Would Israel use such weapons? Do they have the means? Do they have a motive? Have they had the opportunity? Do they have sufficient control of press organizations to encourage this kind of blatant recklessness?

I think we all know the answer.

———————————-

Harvard Study on Nuclear Explosion-Induced Lighting

Title:		An empirical study of the nuclear explosion-induced lightning seen on IVY-MIKE
Authors:		Colvin, J. D.; Mitchell, C. K.; Greig, J. R.; Murphy, D. P.; Pechacek, R. E.; Raleigh, M.
Publication:		Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Volume 92, Issue D5, pp. 5696-5712 (JGR Homepage)
Publication Date:		05/1987
Origin:		AGU; WILEY
Abstract Copyright:		Copyright 1987 by the American Geophysical Union.
DOI:		10.1029/JD092iD05p05696
Bibliographic Code:		1987JGR….92.5696C

—

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

—

Background Report:

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Iran Attack: Azerbaijan Throws Israeli Air Force Out After VT Exposes Plot

Prelude to World War III Outlined

—

by  Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Press TV just announced that Azerbaijan has assured Iran no Israeli attack would occur from their territory. This is their announcement, from Tehran, moments ago:

October 2, 2012 Tehran

Press TV – Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Pakistan says Baku will not allow Israel to use its airspace or land to carry out a military attack on Iran or any other country.

“Azerbaijan has been following a policy of non-interference in the [internal] affairs of other countries,” Baku’s Ambassador to Pakistan Dashgin Shikrov said in an exclusive interview with the Pakistani daily The News on Monday.

The ambassador strongly rejected rumors in Western media outlets about his country’s readiness for providing Israel ground facilities for attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. “Azerbaijan is member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and nobody should have any doubt that it will not permit the use of its territory for committing acts of aggression against another OIC member,” the ambassador added.

Israel has recently stepped up threats of carrying out a strike against Iran’s nuclear energy facilities. The threats are based on the unfounded claims that the peaceful nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic include a military component.

Iranian officials have refuted the allegation and have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East

______________________________

Earlier this week, Reuters confirmed through two Azeri officers that Israeli forces were in place in Azerbaijan and that the president was weighing options of supporting their attack. That text is now below from Reuters. Their unedited full text is at Addendum I:

Reuters – Yet despite official denials by Azerbaijan and Israel, two Azeri former military officers with links to serving personnel and two Russian intelligence sources all told Reuters that Azerbaijan and Israel have been looking at how Azeri bases and intelligence could serve in a possible strike on Iran.

“Where planes would fly from – from here, from there, to where? – that’s what’s being planned now,” a security consultant with contacts at Azeri defense headquarters in Baku said. “The Israelis … would like to gain access to bases in Azerbaijan.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see that Azerbaijan was ”caught with their pants down” and is now trying to lie their way out of this.

___________________________

In an explosive turn of events, Press TV announces Azerbaijan has “turned chicken” after receiving a chastising based on receiving an early distribution of this VT document through Russian sources.

Additional VT staff were, while at the Pentagon, responsible for drawing up the war plans, not just for the initial invasion of Iran but the American invasion of Azerbaijan, slated for 2008, as part of a Bush administration military takeover of the entire Caspian Basin.

The map for that attack by US troops from Iran is below:

The cover sheet for the War Plans/Exercise Plans is below, a document that contained a full outline for needed capabilities for the successful takeover of all of the former Soviet Republics, beginning with Azerbaijan as seen on the map above.

Today, Azerbaijan announced it would allow Israeli planes to use their air bases to attack Iran. Reuters published the press release from Baku, one originally released in VT 27 months ago. From Reuters:

BAKU (Reuters) – Israel’s “go-it-alone” option to attack Iran’s nuclear sites has set the Middle East on edge and unsettled its main ally at the height of a U.S. presidential election campaign.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exudes impatience, saying Tehran is barely a year from a “red line” for atomic capacity. Many fellow Israelis, however, fear a unilateral strike, lacking U.S. forces, would fail against such a large and distant enemy. But what if, even without Washington, Israel were not alone?

Azerbaijan, the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic on Iran’s far northern border, has, say local sources with knowledge of its military policy, explored with Israel how Azeri air bases and spy drones might help Israeli jets pull off a long-range attack.

____________________________

An investigation done by independent intelligence organizations made up of former CIA, Army Intelligence and FBI personnel as published on June 18, 2010, discovered a plot between Israel, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbaijan to attack Iran.

At that time, Israeli planes were training in Turkey on terrain meant to simulate Iran. Israel would send over 8 planes at a time and 6 would return. Sources report that two would fly to Azerbaijan where Israel now occupies two former Soviet fighter bases.

Israel was building a secret air force in Azerbaijan. That “secret air force” is now no longer secret, it is public knowledge but few know its history or the threat to world peace this irresponsible act represents.

The bases were supplied through the Georgian port of Poti with cluster and bunker-buster bombs being delivered beginning June 10, 2010. Units of the Russian Navy observed the deliveries and reported the incident to a world press that suppressed the story. The ship delivering the illegal arms were flagged American, the USS Grapple.

In consultation with intelligence operatives, it was found that the USS Grapple had been leased to Germany who had then allowed Israel to use it to deliver bombs to the Black Sea port under American naval identity.

We have since learned that Turkey, despite what they claim is a hostile relationship with Israel, has allowed over flight by Israeli military planes who are using Turkish air space to relocate to Azerbaijan after a two year period of disagreement.

This relationship, negotiated between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Turkish President Erdogan includes provision for Turkey to assume partial territorial control of a border region inside Syria.

Turkey is planning to seize this territory and call it a “buffer zone” but the “buffer” may include up to 30% of Syrian territory.

Israel and Turkey have agreed to “Balkanize” Syria. However, the roots of today’s announcement were known some time ago.

On June 18, 2010, over two years ago, this columnist released the following information:

“A week ago, Israel leaked to the press that they had permission from Saudi Arabia to use their air space to attack Iran. The Saudi’s quickly denied this.

The effort on Israel’s part was a ruse to cover their real plans, to attack from the Republic of Georgia, close to Iran’s northern border.

However, the breakdown in relations with Turkey after miscalculating the response to their Flotilla raid on a Turkish ship in international waters may have ended this operation.

Israel, whose arms agreements with Turkey mounted to nearly 5 billion dollars over a period of years, had been training pilots in Turkey for bombing attacks on Iran. During these training missions, Israel was smuggling aircraft through Turkish airspace.

Sources indicate that Georgia has become a major transshipment point for narcotics from Afghanistan and other countries in the region. Both a land route through Turkey and into Northern Cyprus and air and sea routes directly into Europe and North America have been cited.

Turkey had allowed Israel to use their air space for training because their terrain closely resembled areas of Iran that Israel planned to attack. However, Turkey was unaware that planes involved in this effort were being relocated to forward staging areas in the Republic of Georgia, making Turkey, technically, fully complicit in this planned illegal attack.

Helping coordinate the attack are intelligence units forward stationed in Azerbaijan, under the guise of technicians, trainers and advisors under the broad armaments agreements with that small nation.

Supply operations, moving necessary ordnance, much of it supplied by the United States under ammunition storage agreements, is being moved through the Black Sea to the Georgian Port of Poti, a major site for exporting coal and manganese ore.

Cover for the supply operations is being performed by the Georgian Coast Guard, set up by Israel and manned with Israeli observers. Their job is to keep Russian surveillance craft away from supply operations under the guise of a “Gaza type” naval blockade of Abkhazia, a separatist province supported by Russia.”

Reuters, in its story published today indicated confirmed sources within the military intelligence community of Azerbaijan. Reuters goes further:

“Yet despite official denials by Azerbaijan and Israel, two Azeri former military officers with links to serving personnel and two Russian intelligence sources all told Reuters that Azerbaijan and Israel have been looking at how Azeri bases and intelligence could serve in a possible strike on Iran.

“Where planes would fly from – from here, from there, to where? – that’s what’s being planned now,” a security consultant with contacts at Azeri defense headquarters in Baku said. “The Israelis … would like to gain access to bases in Azerbaijan.”

“ICEBERG” RELATIONSHIP

That Aliyev, an autocratic ally of Western governments and oil firms, has become a rare Muslim friend of the Jewish state – and an object of scorn in Tehran – is no secret; a $1.6-billion arms deal involving dozens of Israeli drones, and Israel’s thirst for Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea crude, are well documented.

Israel’s foreign minister visited Baku in April this year.

But a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2009 quoted Aliyev, who succeeded his father in 2003, describing relations with Israel as “like an iceberg, nine tenths … below the surface”.

_____________________________

The unknown factor is Azerbaijan’s ability to withstand a massive and immediate ground assault from Iran. US Army experts on the region indicate that Iran has a “superhighway direct to Baku,” the capitol of Azerbaijan and keystone to the massive Baku/Ceyhan pipeline.

Azerbaijan’s military, 45,000 active duty, a few thousand reserves and an unarmed and untrained inactive reserve of 300,000 veterans is extremely small in comparison to Iran’s military.

A reasonable estimate is that, under the best of cases with support from both Turkey and Israel, that Baku could fall in 48 hours or less, should they choose to participate in an unprovoked attack on Iran.

Azerbaijan is closely aligned with Turkey. However, they fought and lost a war in the early 1990’s against Armenia. Azerbaijan lost 16% of their territory at that time.

During that war, Azerbaijan turned to Al Qaeda and Chechen forces for support, an act that angered Russia. Azerbaijan is still a “safe haven” for terrorists and is commonly used to transit narcotics from Afghanistan and is a “way station” in human trafficking.

It is believed that an Israeli attack launched from Azerbaijan would unleash an immediate response from Armenia against Azerbaijan. The two nations have been at the verge of hostilities for nearly two decades.

A recent estimate of regional forces paints a very dark picture for Azerbaijan:

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia has followed a policy of developing its armed forces into a professional, well trained, and mobile military. In 2000, Centre for International Studies and Research reported that at that time the Armenian Army had the strongest combat capability of the three Caucasus countries’ armies (the other two being Georgia and Azerbaijan.

CSTO Secretary, Nikolay Bordyuzha, came to a similar conclusion after collective military drills in 2007 when he stated that, “the Armenian Army is the most efficient one in the post-Soviet space”.

This was echoed more recently by Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Public Council, Russian Ministry of Defense, in a March 2011 interview with Voice of Russia radio.

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CASPIAN OIL SUPPLIES AT RISK

The 1100 mile pipeline is the only outlet for oil from the Caspian basin to outlets on the Mediterranean. A branch of the pipeline services the massive Kirkuk oil fields of Northern Iraq.

The pipeline is owned by a number of companies with BP having a 30 percent stake.

The 25% stake theoretically held by SOCAR, the state oil company of Azerbaijan is under Israeli control, as collateral to underwrite Israeli weapons sales.

Israel has an agreement to link to the pipeline through Iraq, a deal negotiated between the Elat Ashkian Pipeline Company of Israel and the US backed Chalabi government that assumed control of Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

It is no longer clear as to whether the current government in Baghdad is still interested in this project.

Additional threats to the pipeline are in Armenia, where it may also be intercepted and in Turkey, where the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group, has put the pipeline out of commission many times.

The significance of the pipeline is great in that, even if Iran has no rationale to cut oil supplies through the Straits of Hormuz, it could easily gain control of 5% of the world’s oil output and put all Caspian Basin oil off the market without in any way interfering with free transit of sea-lanes.

Additionally, the transit fees charged for use of the pipeline are a major source of revenue for both Georgia and Turkey, a source that would immediately end.

Two “wild card” issues are Russia and Iraq. As Iraq’s government is now under Shiite control and Azerbaijan’s relations with, not just Armenia but Russia have been extremely poor, the chances for this move by Israel turning into a regional conflict or world war are very high.

Taking into account Turkey’s “ham handed” plotting with Israel against Syria and their attempts to spread influence into Central Asia, their short lived position as a potential leader in the Islamic World has clearly taken a “back seat” to Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Israel’s timetable to attack from Azerbaijan is entirely dependent on the risks their long time but highly secretive ally is willing to accept.

Minimally, Azerbaijan might actually disappear. In a best case scenario, they would lose additional territory to Armenia and suffer total devastation of their oil production and processing facilities and destruction of their armed forces.

For the rest of the world, the result, as expected, higher gasoline prices, higher food prices and more threats to currencies already nearing collapse.

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

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